Useful Resources From Q1 2024
Today I share a straightforward issue of the newsletter: links to tools, articles and more that I have found useful (relatively) recently. If this helps, happy to make it a regular occurrence!
Let me try and group these in a vaguely sensible way:
First up, mentally enriching content!
Let’s start on a non-AI related note. A lovely documentary on Fermilab, no physics knowledge required:
2. For the creatives out there, an awesome take on Basquiat’s approach:
A great breakdown of the different components of the AI industry:
An alternative, long-term take on the economic impact of AI:
https://www.noemamag.com/how-ai-could-help-rebuild-the-middle-class/
Next, AI resources I enjoyed
A Midjourney exploration for fiction writers looking at classics from literature:
https://parsabg.com/visualising-novels-using-midjourney-v6-and-gpt-4-part-1-characters
Not a resource per se, but Shimmr is an interesting AI startup in the publishing space. I had the pleasure to chat with their founder, who has developed a great approach for building an AI product that does not scare publishers off! He also wrote a book about it, linked on their site:
A recap of the most popular AI tools last year:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/OC_AI-Tools_V1_NC.jpg
The AI-themed docuseries “Becoming Human” by CNA, a public channel from my current home of Singapore . I have ulterior motives for sharing this, but you will need to wait for the official news! :P
An announcement on the first “clean” large language model that was not trained on unlicensed materials:
https://273ventures.com/kl3m-the-first-legal-large-language-model/
A video the AI community has been raving about, with noted AI Prof Andrew Ng explaining the developments in agentic technology (meaning, more autonomous AIs):
Third, “Traditional” Book Publishing Trends
Good article with tons of great statistics on the publishing markets:
Fourth, AI stuff that made even me go WTF
The fantasy series Wheel of Time is being turned into an LLM+chatbot. I have not read the series, but I could not see the use case:
https://venturebeat.com/ai/true-source-unveils-ai-llm-service-based-on-the-wheel-of-time/
Fresh from a few days ago, Microsoft put out its own video model, called Vasa. You feed it a single image of a person (real, artistic, or made with AI) plus a text, and an avatar will say anything you want. The results are scary/horrifying. I am sure there are legitimate uses for this, but I just don’t know how this, on a global scale, does not upend human interactions. For now, it is for research only, they say (along plenty of other disclaimers):
Finally, Personal Growth
From an Australian YouTuber I like quite a lot, called struthless, and his “Inevitable Goals” framework-as-a-site. I had fun with it:
https://app.brancher.ai/ca423fda-4d97-4ae5-94e7-ba2696a4df39
And, to close it all off, an out-there piece that had me ruminating well after finishing it:
https://www.noemamag.com/ai-could-be-a-bridge-toward-diverse-intelligence/
Thanks for checking out the list. Let me know if any of the above were interesting or useful.
Till next time.
Peace,
Paolo